Pennsylvania governor talks up plan to expand Medicaid his way

Posted on Wednesday, October 30, 2013 at 3:08 pm

Elana Gordon, WHYY, Kaiser Health News

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett may have kept an eye this week on his fellow Republican governor in Ohio, John Kasich, as Kasich bypassed his own Republican legislature to expand the state’s Medicaid program. As part of the Affordable Care Act, states have the option to give coverage to low-income adults, with the federal government picking up most of the tab. Only about half the states so far have planned to do that, starting Jan. 1, and Pennsylvania has, so far, not been among them.

But Corbett is now canvassing the state touting his new “Healthy Pennsylvania” plan, which calls for accepting the generous federal Medicaid dollars to expand the program, though with certain caveats.

At the St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children hospital in North Philadelphia recently, Corbett said: “We need a medical insurance program that’s designed for Pennsylvania. One size does not fit all,” and outlined his concept.

Healthy Pennsylvania would direct newly eligible people, mostly low-income adults without children, into the health insurance exchange where they could buy private coverage. That’s in contrast to how it works now, where the state puts Medicaid patients into private managed care plans or sets the rates for what doctors and hospitals are paid. Corbett’s idea is to use those new federal expansion funds to help subsidize people buying their own individual plans instead.

Corbett is passionate about the reasoning behind Healthy Pennsylvania: “Most important, it’s not putting 500,000 more people into an entitlement program. It’s putting them in a program where they are invested in the program, they are invested in their health care, in a way where a person in Medicaid may not have that same personal investment,” he said.

“The governor is looking for a way to draw down the federal money,” says Nicole Huberfeld, a professor of health law at the University of Kentucky. She’s not surprised by Corbett’s latest move – she believes the federal money can be too much of an opportunity for Democrat icOR Republican Governors to pass up: “The legislature may or may not be on board, but the governor recognizes a lot of federal money to be had that will likely save the state a lot of money in the long run.”

When the Supreme Court gave the states the option last year to expand Medicaid, many Republicans didn’t have an appetite to do it, no matter who paid the bill, according to Matt Baker, a Republican lawmaker in Pennyslvania who chairs the state’s house health committee. “The Democrats in Harrisburg by-and-large support a full blown Medicaid expansion. The Republicans do not. And we’re very, very concerned about the cost.”

But Baker doesn’t view Corbett’s plan as an expansion because of the shared responsibility element and proposed changes to current Medicaid. He’s not in full support until he gets more details, but the plan doesn’t appear to be facing severe political backlash. After all, conversations about Medicaid had been began seeping into the political discourse months earlier, when neighboring Gov. Chris Christie, R-N.J., opted for an expansion.

Pennsylvania Senate Majority Leader, Republican Dominic Pileggi, said “It would be foolish to leave people uninsured” which would leave hospitals and doctors providing free care to “uninsured individuals while money we send to Washington goes to other states to deal with their issues.”

But at least some advocates for a full expansion are cautiously optimistic, including Michael Race of Pennsylvania’s Partnership for Children. While he “would have preferred to see Medicaid expansion put on the table,” and says he was hopeful early on a plan would surface.

The whole plan isn’t a done deal, but Huberfeld, with the University of Kentucky, says one thing is clear: Federal officials at the Department of Health and Human Services have signaled from the outset that they’re willing to work with states to give them maximum flexibility to expand Medicaid under their own terms.

This story is part of a collaboration that includes WHYY, NPR and Kaiser Health News.

Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan health policy research and communications organization not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

College Football News

College Football Poll

Weekly Poll

(Sponsored by Bank of Lincoln County) Do you have family or friends who were impacted by the wildfires in East Tennessee?